China May Have Helped Pakistan Nuclear Weapons Design, Newly Declassified
Intelligence Indicates
CIA in 1977 Correctly Estimated South Africa Could Produce Enough
Weapons-Grade Uranium "to Make Several Nuclear Devices Per Year"
Report on the Libyan Nuclear Program Found that "Serious Deficiencies,"
"Poor Leadership" and Lack of "Coherent Planning" Made it "Highly Unlikely
to Achieve a Nuclear Weapons Capability "Within the Next 10 years"
Intelligence Estimates on Argentina and Brazil Raised Questions About
Their Nuclear Programs and Whether they Sought a Weapons Capability
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 423
Posted -- April 23, 2013
Edited by William Burr
For more information contact:
William Burr - 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, D.C., April 23, 2013 -- China was exporting nuclear materials
to Third World countries without safeguards beginning in the early 1980s,
and may have given Pakistan weapons design information in the early years
of its clandestine program, according to recently declassified CIA
records. The formerly Top Secret reports, published today by the National
Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History
Project, are the CIA's first-ever declassifications of allegations that
Beijing supported Islamabad's nuclear ambitions.
The newly released records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
and Mandatory Declassification Review process, indicate growing U.S.
concern from the 1960s to the early 1990s about the intentions of other
embryonic or potential nuclear states, including Brazil, Argentina, South
Africa and Libya.
Check out today's posting at the National Security Archive website -
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb423/
Find us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive
Unredacted, the Archive blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
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